In a gas turbine engine, ambient air is drawn into a compressor section. Alternate rows of stationary and rotating aerofoil blades are arranged around a common axis, together these accelerate and compress the incoming air. A rotating shaft drives the rotating blades. Compressed air is delivered to a combustor section where it is mixed with fuel and ignited. Ignition causes rapid expansion of the fuel/air mix which is directed in part to propel a body carrying the engine and in another part to drive rotation of a series of turbines arranged downstream of the combustor. The turbines share rotor shafts in common with the rotating blades of the compressor and work, through the shaft, to drive rotation of the compressor blades.
It is well known that the operating efficiency of a gas turbine engine is improved by increasing the operating temperature. The ability to optimise efficiency through increased temperatures is restricted by changes in behaviour of materials used in the engine components at elevated temperatures which, amongst other things, can impact upon the mechanical strength of the blades and rotor disc which carries the blades. This problem is addressed by providing a flow of coolant through and/or over the turbine rotor disc and blades.
It is known to take off a portion of the air output from the compressor (which is not subjected to ignition in the combustor and so is relatively cooler) and feed this to surfaces in the turbine section which are likely to suffer damage from excessive heat. Typically the cooling air is delivered adjacent the rim of the turbine disc and directed to a port which enters the turbine blade body and is distributed through the blade, typically by means of a labyrinth of channels (not shown) extending through the blade body.
In one known arrangement, a duct is provided integral to the blade. The duct is arranged to pass through a terminal portion of the root (a region adjacent an end of the root which, in use, sits at a radially innermost end of a “bucket groove” in the rotor disc circumference which receives the root) with an inlet at an upstream face of the terminal portion and an end at or near the downstream face of the terminal portion. At its axially upstream face, the terminal portion is profiled to conform closely to the bucket groove profile and an inner wall defines the inlet which has a similar shape to the terminal portion at the upstream face. At its axially downstream end, the duct has a much smaller cross section, radially distanced from the bucket groove. An inner wall of the duct diverges from the downstream end of the duct to the inlet forming a continuous, inclined passage. In other arrangements, the duct walls may step down in size to produce a staged narrowing of the cross section. One or more cooling passages are provided within the blade body and extend from a root portion towards a tip portion of the blade body.
In some arrangements the cooling passages comprise a leading edge passage and a main blade or “multi-pass” passage. The leading edge passage extends root to tip adjacent the leading edge of the blade. The “multi-pass” passage is an elongate and convoluted passage which typically incorporates multiple turns in three dimensions which extend the passage between the root and tip of the blade and from a middle section of the blade body, downstream to adjacent the trailing edge of the blade. The “multi-pass” can extend from root to tip multiple times as it travels towards the trailing edge ensuring the carriage of coolant throughout the blade body (excluding the leading edge which is cooled by the leading edge passage). At the root portion end, the cooling passages are arranged to intersect with the duct. The leading edge passage may optionally connect with the main blade passage to provide a single “multi-pass” extending from leading edge to trailing edge.
In some arrangements, the multi-pass branches into two channels each of which intersect with the duct, one intersecting the duct at a position relatively upstream to the position at which the other intersects the duct. Optionally in such an arrangement, the duct is narrowed along a small segment between the two multi-pass branches and serves to meter flow to the downstream branch of the multi-pass, and hence the multi-pass channel itself. The narrowed section is provided with a smaller diameter than the inlets from the duct to both the upstream multi-pass branch and the leading edge passage so a predominance of flow towards the leading edge passage is encouraged. It will be appreciated that in order to allow for thermal expansion and manufacturing tolerances, there exists a small clearance space around an outer wall of the duct which faces the bucket groove.
In the described arrangements, a pressure drop occurs from the upstream end of the duct to the downstream end. A consequence of this drop can be to drive leakage flow through the clearance space between opposing faces of the terminal portion and the bucket groove. Heat transfer resulting from these leakage flows can increase thermal gradients in the turbine disc leading to the disc material being subjected to an increased stress range. The stress range to which the disc material is subjected is a limiting factor in the life of the disc.